Would you like to help drive sustainability at Charles Sturt? Maybe you have a great idea but need some resources to get your project off the ground?
Charles Sturt has a number of Sustainability Project Grants up for grabs. These grants offer students and staff from all faculties, divisions and areas of study a great way to turn a sustainability idea into reality. Grants are available annually for project ideas up to $10,000 – but get in quick! Applications close Wednesday 30 June 2021.
To get started, check out the university’s Sustainability Project Grant Guidelines to learn about how the grants work. The guidelines also outline the application process and who to contact if you need a hand.
Need some inspiration? Take a look at these past sustainability projects.
Habitat enhancement to create a more resilient squirrel glider population
Project objective: The squirrel glider is listed as ‘vulnerable’ in NSW. Populations are subject to a number of threatening processes that act at the landscape scale (e.g. fragmentation, and habitat degradation). It is clear that the populations around Albury campus are threatened by increasingly dry summers and urban development. The Albury campus and surrounding conservation lands have the potential to provide a significant long term refuge for the possums in the area, if these areas are appropriately managed.
This project aims to create a more resilient population of squirrel gliders by addressing these landscape scale threats. Specifically it will address fragmentation by patches of vegetation (stepping stones/gliding corridors) between existing remnant vegetation. It will also address habitat degradation by random planting of wattles within existing remnant vegetation.
A ‘B&B Highway’ or native garden for pollinators on the Bathurst campus
Project objective: Birds, bees and various types of insects within broader ecosystems play an essential role in pollinating crops that provide our food. Yet scientists observe that pollinator numbers are declining across Australia. Food security research shows that improving pollinator density and diversity – in other words, making sure that increasing numbers and types of bees and insects are visiting plants – has a direct impact on crop yields, making their role in biodiversity vitally important.
Partnering with PlantingSeeds, a Sydney-based NGO fostering environmental sustainability and biodiversity in the urban and peri-urban environment, the objective of this project is to research, build and evaluate the impact of a ‘B&B’ or low-water native garden for local pollinators. While important in itself, the garden will represent a further manifestation of the School of Management and Marketing’s (SMM) commitment to sustainability and provide an ongoing and relatively simple engagement and educational opportunity for staff, students and other stakeholders
Wagga Wagga campus irrigated turf reduction project
Project objective: In a context of a drying climate and increasing water scarcity, campus landscaping needs to be adapted to cope with hotter, drier conditions and less potable water use for irrigation. The Wagga Wagga campus grounds team is taking a proactive response to this challenge. (At the time of application) the campus has around 18 hectares of irrigated turf and 5 hectares of sub-surface irrigated garden beds. The potable water use for these sites is estimated to be 2.5-3.5 mega-litres per hectare over the 2018/19 summer period. By selectively reducing unhealthy turf areas (eg. soil fungi, excessive shading and mature tree root growth) and replacing with climate suitable low or zero irrigated water landscapes, a practical and attractive substitute to irrigated turf would be trialled.
Learn more about sustainability
If you’re not ready to launch into a project yet but you’d like to discover some easy ways to get involved, try the new ‘Sustainability at Charles Sturt University’ learning module in Interact2.
Created by the Sustainability at Charles Sturt team (formerly CSU Green), this module encompasses a great deal of information about sustainability and how you can contribute. Best of all, it only takes 20 minutes to complete! To start the module, log into Interact2 and click on the ‘Organisations’ tab at the top of the page. Then search ‘sustainability’ to find the ‘Sustainability at Charles Sturt University’ module. Click the drop-down arrow to enrol and away you go!
More information can also be found on the Sustainability at Charles Sturt webpage.
